IIDA Perspective - Fall/Winter 2015 - 43

The solution starts with the simplest and hardest
thing in the world: get everyone on the team in a
room together, right at the start of the project. The
project manager, the architect, other subconsultants, a strategist if you have one, and some
of the business users of the new environment.
Sometimes designers get a bit frustrated by this,
and clients may complain that it will take too long
and add too much time to the process. But what
emerges is a really fast, clear design process that
actually allows more creativity and freedom for
the designers.
Once you're in the room, get to know one another;
you might even do a team activity. But the key is to
start by talking about one thing: What are the key
principles driving why the project is needed?
Debate it, talk about it, get to a place where
everyone shares a common understanding or idea.
Sometimes that requires asking people what they
want, rather than what they need. This is where the
process becomes really complex, because what
you're actually talking about is human behavior-
specifically human behavior within that
organization. That's why the next step in the
process is what I call co-creation: you need to bring
the user into the room with you. Have everyone
split up into small groups, have them each take
a piece of the project, identify some basic
parameters for components (this much quiet space,
this much collaborative space, this much team
space, etc.), give them sheets of paper and some
markers and let everyone design whatever they
want for forty-five minutes.

What happens as a result of this process is often
really interesting. Sometimes designers struggle
with it. They try to design in too much detail, and
don't think on a conceptual level about how the
organization works. But you'll almost certainly get
an amazing amount of food for thought, and you'll
start to really understand how the client is
organized and what they really want. I've been in
co-creation sessions where every single person in
the room is designing, even members of the client's
staff who aren't leadership or decision makers, like
the assistants. There are no rules around who can
be a designer in this phase of the process. Everyone
has insights about how their organization works.
The goal is to look at all of the ideas, rank and
compare them against those key principles and key
drivers you've identified.
By the end of a co-creating session the team has
likely been able to block out some concepts, really
bring the project brief to life-and they have a very
strong buy-in from the actual user. With the basic
concepts agreed upon, designers are then freer to
work on developing creative solutions, confident
that the fundamental concepts are sound and
fully supported.
The process allows design teams to test ideas as
they're developed, and bring a really clear direction
to their work. Designers can sometimes be inspired
by a single element that manifests into a killer
idea-and I've seen too many designers lock onto
an idea, spend hours trying to post-justify it and
bring it to life, only to find out there's a
fundamental reason why it won't work for their
client. The freedom that comes from co-creation
and the unique relationship and understanding
that can only be derived from time spent together,
from a human factor, means that when a big idea
does emerge, it is informed by as many factors as
possible, and the influence of people.

PERSPECTIVE

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of IIDA Perspective - Fall/Winter 2015